“Poverino! Poverino!” repeated the monk as we strolled together slowly beside the old red walls of the once-proud city. “To think that our poor friend Burton died so suddenly—and without a word!”
“Not exactly without a word,” I said. “He gave several directions, one of which was that he placed his daughter Mabel beneath my care.”
“Ah, the little Mabel,” he sighed. “Surely it is ten years since I saw her in Manchester. She was then about eleven, a tall, dark-haired, rather pretty child, a striking likeness of her mother—poor woman.”
“You knew her mother, then?” I asked in some surprise.
He nodded in the affirmative, but gave no further information.
Suddenly turning to me as we walked towards the city gate, the Ponto Santa Maria, where the uniformed officers of the dazio were lounging ready to tax every pennyworth of food-stuff entering there, he demanded—
“How did you know that I had an appointment with our friend to-night?”
“By the letter which you wrote him, and which was found in his bag after his decease,” I responded frankly.
He grunted with distinct satisfaction. It struck me indeed as though he were apprehensive that Burton had before his death told me some details regarding his life. I recollected that curious cipher upon the playing-card, although I made no reference to it.
“Ah! I see!” he exclaimed presently. “But if that little wallet, or whatever it was, that he always wore either concealed within his clothes or suspended around his neck, is missing, does not it point to a tragedy—theft and murder?”